Chapter 12: The Double Feast
The shopping trip was an exercise in surrender. The big-box store on the outskirts of town had a plus-size section shoved into a back corner, past automotive and garden supplies, as if an afterthought. Racks of floral prints and tent-like black dresses hung under harsh fluorescent lights.
Evelyn moved through them like a ghost, her fingers brushing polyester blends. Liam pushed the cart, which already held a bulk package of paper towels and a giant jar of dill pickles—his idea of a grocery run.
“Anything?” he asked, his voice soft beside her.
“It’s all… old,” she murmured, holding up a shapeless tunic adorned with oversized lilacs. She felt a surge of frustrated tears. The vibrant, fitted clothes of her past felt like artifacts from a lost civilization. This was what was left. This, or living permanently in Liam’s dwindling supply of stretched-out tees.
A sales associate with a sharp bob and a headset approached, her smile professional. “Can I help you find a size?”
Evelyn froze. Saying it aloud felt like a confession to a stranger.
Liam stepped in smoothly. “We’re looking for some casual pieces. Soft materials. Maybe in a… 3X to start?”
The associate’s eyes flicked over Evelyn’s form, assessing with a practiced, impersonal speed. Evelyn wrapped her arms around herself, the basketball shorts digging into her thighs.
“Right this way,” the woman said, leading them to a different rack. “These are our everyday jersey knits. Very forgiving.” She pulled out a simple, long-line t-shirt in a heather gray. “This has good length and stretch. Want to try it?”
Evelyn took the hanger. The fabric was soft, yes. It was also enormous in her hands. She couldn’t imagine it fitting her; it looked like a sail.
The fitting room was a curtained-off alcove. The mirror was merciless. She stripped off Liam’s t-shirt, the one that now barely reached her waistband. Her reflection was a landscape of rolling, pale flesh, marked here and there by the faint red lines of seams that had bitten in. She felt monumental. She pulled the gray jersey shirt over her head. It cascaded down her body, soft and cool.
It fit. Not tight, but not loose. It skimmed the massive curves of her bust, fell smoothly over the dome of her stomach, and ended just at the hem of her shorts. It covered everything. It was simple. It was the first piece of clothing in months that actually contained her without a struggle. She let out a shaky breath.
“How’s it looking?” Liam’s voice came from outside the curtain.
She pushed the curtain back. He was leaning against the opposite wall, cart parked beside him. He looked up. His eyes darkened, a slow smile spreading across his face. He didn’t say anything. He just looked, his gaze a physical warmth traveling from her shoulders down to where the soft fabric draped over her hips.
“It fits,” she said quietly.
“It’s perfect,” he replied, his voice low. “You look comfortable. You look like you.”
The associate returned. “Any luck?”
“We’ll take this,” Liam said, not taking his eyes off Evelyn. “And maybe a few more. Different colors.”
They left with five of the long-line tees—black, gray, navy, burgundy, forest green—and two pairs of impossibly soft, drawstring pants made of a material that felt like clouds. The total was staggering. Evelyn flinched when the cashier announced it.
Liam swiped his card without a blink. “Infrastructure,” he whispered in her ear as he bagged the clothes, his hand giving her hip a firm, proprietary squeeze.
The new clothes changed the atmosphere in the apartment. Moving through her days in soft, dedicated fabric instead of stolen, straining cotton gave Evelyn a new, strange confidence. She worked in her “Bison” throne wearing the forest green shirt, feeling professional and grounded. She ate dinner—a pot of chili Liam made, so thick the spoon could stand in it—with less subconscious hunching, the burgundy tee accommodating the deep, full expansion of her stomach effortlessly.
The scale became a weekly ritual, not a source of panic but of mutual revelation. Sunday mornings, after a lazy, heavy breakfast, she would stand on it while Liam leaned in the doorway, watching the numbers lock in.
Two hundred and sixty-one.
Two hundred and sixty-eight.
Two hundred and seventy-four.
The gains were consistent, substantial. They settled into her frame, broadening her back, smoothing the last sharp angle from her jaw into a soft, rounded curve, filling out the new clothes until they, too, began to fit with a snug, comforting embrace. The hunger was a constant, reliable companion. Her appetite seemed to grow in direct proportion to her body, a self-perpetuating loop. Liam kept pace, his grocery trips evolving into strategic missions. He bought family packs of meat, industrial-sized bags of rice, gallon jars of pasta sauce. The fridge hummed under the weight of it all.
One Thursday evening, he came home with a box. Not a food box. A flat, rectangular one.
“What’s that?” she asked, lowering herself onto the sofa with a soft groan. She’d been battling a tricky client logo all day and felt drained, her brain foggy. The feeling always triggered a deep, specific hunger.
“A solution,” he said, pulling out a utility knife. He sliced the tape and pulled out a large, rectangular piece of hardware: a digital, talking bathroom scale. It was sleek, with a wide, non-slip platform.
Evelyn stared. “Liam. Why?”
“The other one has a limit of three hundred pounds,” he said simply, attaching the batteries. His tone was pure practicality, like he was explaining why they needed a new fire extinguisher. “This one goes to five. And it talks. It’ll call out the weight. No more craning your neck.”
The casualness of it, the forward-thinking, stole her breath. He wasn’t just acknowledging her present; he was architecting her future. He was ensuring the tool they used to mark her growth would never run out of room. The unspoken number hung in the air—five hundred—a distant, impossible country on a map he was already charting.
He set it on the floor in front of the sofa. “Try it.”
She hesitated, a old flutter of nerves in her chest. Then she looked at his face—patient, encouraging, utterly certain. She pushed herself up, a laborious process that involved bracing her hands on her knees. She stepped onto the new platform. It was wider, more stable.
A pleasant, gender-neutral digital voice filled the quiet room. “Two hundred. And seventy-six. Pounds.”
The voice was calm, definitive. It removed all ambiguity. It was a fact, announced to the world. Or at least to the living room.
Evelyn looked down at the digital display, then at Liam. A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep, a release of tension she didn’t know she was holding. “It talks.”
“It does,” he grinned. “No arguing with it.”
She stepped off. The voice had made it real in a new way. It wasn’t a secret flashed in the bathroom glow. It was a broadcast.
That night, the hollow feeling was back, a yawning pit that even the massive chicken and dumplings dinner hadn’t permanently filled. It was a restless, edgy hunger. She stood in the kitchen’s glow, the talking scale a silent sentinel by the fridge. She opened the freezer. A gallon tub of vanilla ice cream. She took it out, found a spoon, and began to eat.
She ate standing at the counter, the cold sweetness a perfect balm. She ate until her forehead ached with the cold, then kept going, the sugary fat coating the void inside. She was halfway through the gallon when Liam found her.
He didn’t speak. He came up behind her, his body warm against her back. One hand slid around her, his palm spreading over the front of her soft gray tee, which was now stretched drum-tight over the frozen mass in her stomach. The other hand covered hers on the spoon, gently taking it. He fed her the next bite himself, his arm encircling her, holding the heavy, solid weight of her body against his.
“My perfect girl,” he murmured into her hair, his voice rough with sleep and awe. He fed her another spoonful. “Eating it all up.”
She let him, leaning back into his strength, her own hands coming to rest over the arm that banded her enormous middle. The kitchen was silent except for the hum of the fridge and the soft sounds of swallowing. He fed her until the tub was empty, scraping the last sticky bits from the corners.
He put the empty tub in the sink. Then he turned her around, his hands framing her face, his thumbs brushing her cheeks. He kissed her, deep and slow, tasting of vanilla and something darker, more possessive. His hands drifted down, kneading the formidable, frozen curve of her belly through the soft fabric.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s listen.”
He led her to the living room, to the new scale. He didn’t need to ask. The ritual was set. She stepped on.
The calm, digital voice broke the silence of the dark apartment.
“Two hundred. And seventy-eight. Pounds.”
Two more pounds. In a single, glacial, greedy sitting.
Liam exhaled, a sound of pure satisfaction. He knelt in front of her, right there on the living room rug. He put his hands on her hips, then leaned forward and pressed his lips against the straining fabric of her shirt, right over the center of her swollen stomach. He stayed there for a long moment, in a silent, worshipful kiss.
When he looked up, his hazel eyes were shining. “Listen to that,” he whispered, as if the voice were singing a hymn. He helped her off the scale, his hands strong under her arms. “You’re incredible.”
He led her to bed, his hands never leaving her body, mapping the new, relentless truth of her. As she drifted off, her digestion a slow, heavy earthquake inside her, she realized the fear was gone. It had been replaced by a profound, quiet curiosity. The scale could talk now. It would tell them the story, pound by pound, all the way to its limit.
And for the first time, lying under the weight of her own body and the warmth of his embrace, Evelyn found herself eager to hear what it would say next.
The next morning, her back ached. It was a deep, structural protest, a complaint from the very architecture of her spine. Getting out of bed required a procedure: roll to the side, plant both feet, use the momentum of her own substantial mass to swing upright. The mattress springs shrieked in relief. Liam watched, already dressed, his expression a mix of concern and that familiar, unwavering admiration.
“You okay?” He handed her the soft burgundy tee from the floor.
“Just stiff,” she grunted, pulling the fabric over the vast topography of her body. It was getting harder to lift her arms high enough. “Everything creaks.”
He smiled at that, a quick, private thing. “I know the feeling.” He meant the furniture, the floorboards, the scale. He came behind her, his hands finding the knots in her lower back through the soft jersey, his thumbs pressing in. “We need groceries. Real groceries. The kind that requires a cart.”
The car was the first real confrontation. Liam’s sensible sedan sat low in the apartment parking lot. Evelyn approached the passenger door with a sudden, cold dread. She hadn’t been in it for over a week. She pulled the handle. The door swung open with its usual sound, but the space beyond the frame looked smaller, constricted.
She had to turn slightly sideways to begin the lowering process. She gripped the roof and the seatback, letting herself down in stages. Her bottom touched the leather, then her weight settled. The entire car sank on its springs with a long, groaning sigh. The seatbelt, when she pulled it across the expansive plateau of her stomach, strained. The buckle clicked with finality, the strap cutting a deep, diagonal valley across her chest and belly. She was in, but just barely. The steering wheel felt impossibly close to her, the dashboard crowding her knees.
Liam slid into the driver’s seat. The car listed perceptibly to the right, her side. He started the engine. “Comfortable?”
“It’s tight,” she breathed out, already feeling the pressure of the belt. The car seemed to hunker down on its axles as they pulled out of the lot.
At the supermarket, the cart was his idea. “Wait here,” he said, parking in a distant spot. He fetched a large, metal-framed shopping cart from the corral. He pushed it to her open door. “Step into the cart. Use it for support.”
It was absurd. It was ingenious. She used the cart’s edge as a rail, hauling herself up and out. The car rose, bouncing slightly with her absence. She leaned heavily on the cart as they walked, its wheels wobbling under the transferred weight. The store was a marathon of fluorescent light and overwhelming choice. Liam steered, but she pointed.
“The double-pack of ground beef. And the family-sized pasta. Not that one, the wider noodles,” she instructed, her voice quiet but urgent. The hunger was a live wire, buzzing from the moment she’d wrestled free of the car. He loaded the cart: sacks of potatoes, jars of alfredo sauce, a whole pre-cooked rotisserie chicken she insisted they eat in the car.
Back in the parking lot, he packed the trunk methodically. The bags filled it completely. “Hop in,” he said, opening her door.
The process of sitting was worse this time. The rotisserie chicken, warm and greasy in its plastic container, was on her lap. She lowered herself, the car groaning deeply, a metal fatigue sound she’d never heard before. When she was fully seated, the container pressed into the soft undercurve of her breasts. She didn’t wait. She tore the lid off and dug in with her fingers, pulling apart the steaming, salty flesh.
Liam got in, the car dipping again. He watched her eat as he drove, one hand on the wheel. She finished the entire chicken by the time they pulled into their street. She licked the glossy fat from her fingers, then balled the container and shoving it into the already-full footwell.
The final, humiliating crisis was the stairs. Their third-floor walk-up had always been a minor challenge. Now it was an expedition. She took them one at a time, her hand white-knuckling the railing, her breath coming in short, wet gasps by the second landing. Liam followed behind, his arms full of grocery bags, watching her broad back block the light from the window above. Every step produced a soft, pained sound from the wooden boards. He realized it was getting harder to handle her.
Not emotionally. That part was simple; his devotion was absolute, a settled fact. Logistically. Physically. The car’s suspension. The strained seatbelt. These stairs. The way she now filled any doorway she passed through, requiring a conscious, sideways turn. He saw the future in that moment, a swift calculation: wider doors, a ground-floor apartment, a sturdier vehicle. The planning part of his mind, the part that crafted lesson units, began drafting a new, secret syllabus for their life.
Inside, she collapsed onto the sofa, which accepted her with a prolonged, distressed creak. She was flushed, sweating, utterly spent. The simple act of procuring food had consumed her. Liam put everything away, the fridge crammed to bursting. He brought her a glass of water. She drank it in one long, desperate pull.
“I’m a sofa whale,” she whispered, the shame surfacing in the quiet aftermath of exertion.
He sat on the coffee table facing her, his knees almost touching the sofa’s edge, which was compressed deeply under her weight. He took her hand. “You’re my sofa whale. You just carried all of that up here. You’re incredible.”
“Liam, it’s… everything groans. The car. The stairs.” She looked down at her body, at the way her stomach merged seamlessly with her thighs, a single, seamless slope of softness under the strained fabric. “I’m using it all up. The space. The food. Everything.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a husky, intimate register. “Good. That’s what it’s for. You’re supposed to use it up.” He placed his hand on her knee, then let it slide up the immense curve of her thigh, a territory he knew as well as his own skin. “Listen to me. The groaning is just… the sound of you winning. Of us winning.”
He stood, extending his hands. “Come on. One more thing.” He helped her up, a major undertaking of leverage and grunting effort. He led her to the bathroom, to the talking scale. She stepped on, still breathless, her hair stuck to her temples.
The digital voice was calm, indisputable.
“Two hundred. And eighty. Pounds.”
Four pounds since the ice cream. Since the chicken. Since the struggle.
She didn’t step off. She looked at the number, then at Liam’s reflection in the mirror behind her. His gaze was fixed on the digital readout, his chest rising and falling with a slow, deep rhythm. He wasn’t looking at her body in the mirror. He was looking at the proof of it.
He reached out and turned her, gently, on the platform. He faced her, his hands going to her hips, his grip firm, almost testing. He tried to lift her, just an inch, a playful gesture he’d done a thousand times. His muscles corded in his neck. The scale’s display flickered wildly. He couldn’t. He set her back down, a rough laugh escaping him.
“See?” he said, his voice thick with a strange, exhilarated pride. He wrapped his arms around her, his hands barely meeting at the small of her back. He buried his face in the soft column of her neck. “I can’t even lift you anymore.”
He said it like it was a milestone. Like it was the best news he’d ever heard. And held there, anchored to the earth by her own beautiful, ungraspable weight, Evelyn felt the last thread of her old self snap.
And held there, anchored to the earth by her own beautiful, ungraspable weight, Evelyn felt the last thread of her old self snap.
It dissolved somewhere between the groan of the car springs and the calm, digital announcement of two-eighty. A quiet settled in its place. Liam’s breath was hot against her neck. His hands slid from her hips to the shelf of her belly, holding the full, heavy curve like a promise kept.
“I’m starving,” she whispered into his shoulder. The hunger was back, not a pang but a deep, hollow command. It felt different now—authorized.
“I know,” he murmured. He didn’t let go. “I saw you look at the potatoes in the bag. Your eyes got all focused.”
He finally released her, his palms lingering. The scale beeped once as she stepped off. In the kitchen, he didn’t ask. He pulled the five-pound bag of russets from the counter and set it by the cutting board. He retrieved the family-sized tub of sour cream, the brick of butter, the giant bag of shredded cheddar from the overstuffed fridge. The packet of bacon was thick and cold.
“All of it?” she asked, her voice small. She wasn’t referring to a single meal.
“However much you want,” he said, already slicing bacon into strips. The practical teacher’s hands moved with efficient grace. “It’s why we bought it.”
He fried the bacon in the largest skillet they owned. The smell was savage and salty, filling the small kitchen with an urgent, greasy haze. While it cooked, he peeled potatoes, his knuckles white against the brown skins, dropping the pale lumps into a pot of water. Evelyn watched from her seat at the table, her hands folded over the vast, quiet dome of her stomach. The emptiness inside it felt bottomless, a chasm waiting to be filled with solid, heavy things.
The potatoes boiled. He drained them, mashed them with a torrent of butter and most of the sour cream until they were a smooth, gleaming mountain. He folded in the crispy bacon rubble and a storm of cheddar, the cheese melting into yellow streaks.
He didn’t serve it on a plate. He brought the entire pot to the table, still in its pot, setting it on a trivet before her. He placed a serving spoon, handle toward her, beside it. Then he brought the skillet, with the remaining pool of bacon fat and the last few crisp fragments. Finally, he set down the nearly full tub of sour cream and the remaining block of butter with a knife.
He sat across from her, saying nothing. The offering was complete.
Evelyn picked up the spoon. It felt insignificantly small. She drove it into the peak of the potatoes. They were insanely rich, warm and gliding over her tongue, the pockets of cheese and salt from the bacon exploding. She ate. She didn’t look up. The spoon moved from pot to mouth in a steady, metronomic rhythm. She swallowed without chewing much, the soft mass sliding down to pack into the foundation of her gut.
Half the pot was gone when she paused, a sheen of sweat on her upper lip. The physical act of eating was becoming laborious, her jaw aching, her breathing slightly strained. The hunger, however, was undimmed. It was a separate engine now, running on its own fuel.
She looked at the skillet. Using the spoon, she scraped the congealing bacon fat and the last brittle bits into the potato pot, stirring the golden grease into the white. The mixture grew slick, heavier. She kept eating.
When the spoon could no longer efficiently scrape the sides of the pot, she did something she’d never done. She pulled the pot closer, encircling it with her arms. She leaned over it, her curls falling forward, and used the spoon to push the food directly into her mouth. There was no pretense of portioning, no distance between her and the consumption. She was mining it.
Liam watched, his chair tilted back. A muscle in his jaw jumped. He got up once, silently, to fetch her a large glass of whole milk. He set it by her elbow. She drank without stopping, a long gulp that washed down a dense, unchewed bolus of food.
The pot was empty. A few smears of grease and potato clung to the ceramic. Her stomach, when she looked down, was a profound, taut hemisphere. It pressed against the table’s edge, demanding space. The hunger finally, finally receded, not to satisfaction but to a stunned, overstuffed silence. She was so full it felt surgical, each new ounce a precise, internal stretch.
She blinked slowly. The kitchen came back into focus. Liam’s eyes were dark, wider than usual.
“The sour cream,” she heard herself say. Her voice was thick, slurry. She pointed a greasy finger at the nearly-full tub.
A slow smile spread across his face. He pushed it toward her, along with the butter knife. “Finish it.”
She pried the lid off. The white cream was cool and smooth. She didn’t use the spoon now. She took the knife, speared a massive, glistening portion, and brought it to her mouth. It was tangy, cold, fat. She ate it plain, swallowing great, coagulating lumps of it. She scraped the sides clean. The empty container joined the empty pot.
She couldn’t move. Breathing was a conscious effort, a shallow sip of air that couldn’t fully inflate her lungs. She simply existed, a monument to intake. Liam stood. He came around the table. His hands hovered over her shoulders, then settled, kneading the thick, tight flesh there.
“Can you stand?” His voice was reverent.
She tried. It was a physics problem. She braced her hands on the table, the wood creaking under her weight. She pushed, her face flushing with the strain. The chair scraped back with a shriek. She rose, a continent upheaving. The room tilted for a second. Her belly led the way, an immense, low-slung weight that changed her center of gravity entirely. She took a shuffling step, then another, a slow, sideshow waddle toward the living room.
The talking scale waited. She stepped on, the platform accepting her new, colossal reality without protest.
The digital voice filled the silent, grease-scented apartment.
“Two hundred. And eighty-eight. Pounds.”